7.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we continue exploring interpersonal concerns that arise in the reflective writing corpora. While in Chapter 6 we introduced the notion of interpersonal pragmatics and relational work, and zoomed in on the evidence of awareness raising and the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge, Chapter 7 focuses primarily on acts of positioning and identity construction. As the definition of relational work implies, linguistic choices have impacts on and/or are expressions of the relationships that interactants have or wish to create. As scholars in interpersonal pragmatics, we thus pose the following research questions: What evidence of relational work that results in identity construction can we discover? How do the students deal with the tensions that might arise when having to portray oneself in a negative or positive light in the past/present?

A straightforward link between identity construction and the reflective writing texts can be established through their narrative core. As already discussed in Section 5.4.2, any reflective writing text faces the challenge of transforming past experience so that the addressees can understand the background aspects that are important for creating the story world. In addition to location and time, positioning the protagonists who appear in the texts is an important aspect of this process as story worlds are created with only a few words. Consider Excerpt 7.1 from one of the expert columns (AIM). It uses indexical categories to position the narrator of the text:

Excerpt 7.1

The author's lexical choices immediately position her as a woman, a physician, a mother and a person working in the United States.